


A Match Made

by partypaprika



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:20:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21897322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partypaprika/pseuds/partypaprika
Summary: Joe pulled up to the curb of the train station and got out of his cab to help load luggage for the next person up. Immediately, he froze short. Standing at the curb, dressed in a suit like he was Franklin D. Roosevelt, hair smartly combed back and with a reciprocal look of surprise on his face was David Webster.He looked—he looked good. Like he’d never spent years of his life in a hellhole fighting for his life. It was a hell of a thing and it took Joe more than a moment to recover. “Web?” he said.David shook himself minutely. “Liebgott—Joe, what are doing here?”“Astute as always, college boy,” Joe said, coming over and grabbing David’s bag, opening up the trunk to put it in. “I’ll give you three guesses.”
Relationships: Joseph Liebgott/David Kenyon Webster
Comments: 14
Kudos: 65
Collections: DDSherman Holiday Exchange for BoB 2019





	A Match Made

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThrillingDetectiveTales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/gifts).



> ThrillingDetectiveTales, I hope you enjoy!

As best that Joe could tell, the aches started coming a month or so after Joe had returned to San Francisco. They started out so gradual, it took him a while to realize that something was happening. That and the fact that he’d spent the last three years living in a state of perpetual pain. If it wasn’t cuts or bullet wounds, it was frostbite or, at the very least, muscle aches from training.

It had seemed normal to have something hurting in his chest—almost as it should be. But as the other aches faded, Joe couldn’t help but notice the faint ever-present soreness in his chest—almost like the rawness after a burn.

Sometimes, it would flare up suddenly with no rhyme or reason. Joe could be driving his taxi or home, helping his ma make dinner or even out at a bar, and, without warning, everything went blurry for a second. Like being stabbed with an M3, right in the chest, for a long agonizing second, before it dulled into a fresh tenderness.

He could have gone to see a doctor, but what would they be able to do? They’d probably dismiss it or let him know that it was just some injury from the war making itself known. Doctors weren’t exactly cheap and Joe wasn’t exactly rolling in it.

If it hadn’t already killed him, it probably wouldn’t. Eventually it would heal on its own, so there didn’t seem to be much reason to do anything about it.

The first order of business when Joe returned was getting a job—he’d done work as a barber before the war, but a friend had recommended that he apply for a job as a taxi driver. The pay was better and there was a union and everything, so Joe’d taken a job with them.

They gave Joe an older cab, a Chrysler Plymouth. She wasn’t much to look at, but she ran well and got Joe customers, so they were all squared up in Joe’s book. At first, the sharp contrast to civilian life disoriented Joe. While driving, he kept expecting to turn a corner and see someone pointing a gun at him. Cars backfiring made him freeze up, his body expecting a fight. But as the months went on and 1946 turned into 1947, he began to readjust. Besides, cab driving wasn’t the worst job in the world—the customers were pretty interesting and it kept him on his toes.

Today, Joe and his best girl were waiting outside the Oakland train station waiting in line for the cab stand as the latest round of passengers arrived into San Francisco. Joe pulled up to the curb and got out of the car to help load luggage for the next person up. Immediately, he froze short. Standing at the curb, dressed in a suit like he was Franklin D. Roosevelt, hair smartly combed back and with a reciprocal look of surprise on his face was David Webster.

He looked—he looked good. Like he’d never spent years of his life in a hellhole fighting for his life. Eyes just as piercing as Joe had thought he’d forgotten. Apparently not.

It was a hell of a thing and it took Joe more than a moment to recover. “Web?” he said.

David shook himself minutely. “Liebgott—Joe, what are doing here?”

“Astute as always, college boy,” Joe said, coming over and grabbing David’s bag, opening up the trunk to put it in. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

David carefully closed his mouth, shook himself again, and then laughed. “I deserved that.”

Joe nodded towards the car. “I’ll let you work it out inside. Don’t want to keep the good folks of San Francisco waiting for their cabs too long.”

“Right, of course,” David said, but made no move towards the car. Joe carefully pushed David towards the door.

“Come on, Web,” Joe said and that got David’s attention, finally prompting him to walk to the car and get in, so Joe got in the front seat. “Where to?”

“The Palace Hotel,” David said. He paused for a second. “God, I can’t believe it. Of all the places…”

“Well, I do live here,” Joe said. “So if you were aiming to find me, you probably picked the best place to start.”

“How have you been?” David asked.

“Eh,” Joe said. “Alright. Better than the war, although it’s probably difficult to find a worse place than being actively shot at. I’m glad to be back. I miss the guys though.”

“Yeah,” David said. “I was so eager to get back. And then I got home and immediately found myself longing for the bombed-out ruins of Europe.”

“Tell me something that I don’t know,” Joe said, smiling, and when he looked back in the rearview mirror, he saw David smiling as well. Both of them happy at the same time? Might as well announce that pigs flew. Maybe they’d start making pigs paratroopers next.

They spent the rest of the drive catching up—David’s father owned Webster’s Electric and had been sent out to meet with the managers of their west coast outfit.

“Fancy, Web,” Joe said. He’d always known that David came from money. One didn’t go to Harvard on a barber’s salary, but it was different seeing it in person. David had been unlike the other enlisted men—he’d been to college, liked reading—but he’d also been one of them. They’d fought side by side, eaten the same gruel. Money hadn’t mattered. It sure as hell couldn’t save them when they were jumping from one thousand feet up in the air.

But that was then. This was now. Now, things like money and school mattered. Joe drove the taxi cab. David rode in it.

The conversation flowed well and when they pulled up to the hotel, a tall building spanning an entire block on Market, imposing and foreign, Joe felt a small spring of disappointment that their chance meeting was over. But, looking through the lobby and seeing the men dressed in suits that Joe could spend a full year working and still not afford brought Joe back to firm reality. It was lucky that he’d had a brief conversation with David—even in the same city, they occupied two worlds.

As Joe got out of the car, David pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil. “Where do you live?” David asked.

Joe raised his eyebrow and David’s cheeks went red. “Why, you going to come visit my ma?” Joe asked.

“Maybe I will,” David said loftily. “Even though her son has no manners.”

“She won’t disagree with you there,” Joe said, but wrote down his address and the phone number at the apartment for good measure, even though he knew that David would never use it.

“You can also call me here,” David said, although they both knew that Joe wouldn’t be making any phone calls to the Palace in the near or distant future.

“Good seeing you, Web,” Joe said.

“Yeah, you too,” David said and Joe waved once before driving away.

That night, as Joe lay in bed, he thought about David. Joe held no illusions that they’d ever see each other again. So, he let himself do what he’d never allowed during the war—he imagined David next to him.

David was handsome enough to turn heads—he probably knew it—but he’d never acted like it. David had written constantly during the war, his long fingers like a pianist’s. Joe now imagined David pulling him close, his grip strong and those fingers running up Joe’s sides. Joe thought about what it would be like to have David kissing him before going to his knees. Joe wanted to kiss David back, surge against those thick, firm lips that Joe wanted to be intimately acquainted with.

It would never happen, but there was a sense of relief in letting himself see it.

He jerked off to the memory of David, feeling more than a little dirty about it, but not guilty enough to stop.

After he finished, his chest felt tender—that now-familiar pain returning to it—and it wouldn’t have been remarkable except for the fact that it had gone away at all. He hadn’t noticed any pain almost all day. Odd, Joe thought, and that was the last thought before he fell asleep.

A few days later, Joe came home from a long and exhausting day of ferrying people, ready to take a nap, when his ma pressed a note into his hands.

“A man called for you,” she said. “He introduced himself as David and asked that you call him back.”

Joe took the note, his heart rabbiting in his chest. He turned it over—28881, David Webster.

“He say anything else?” Joe asked.

His ma shook her head. “Who is he?”

Joe deliberated on what to tell his mother. Eventually he went with, “He’s an old friend from the army.” His mother raised an eyebrow at that. “We just ran into each other,” Joe tried to explain, unsure what he had to explain, but feeling guilty all the same.

“A friend from the army,” his mother said in that dry way of hers that said she knew that there was more to the story, but that she’d let Joe come to her in his own time about it.

“Really, that’s it,” Joe said even as he went over to the phone. His pulse was still racing, although the ever-present pain in his chest had lightened, as if the mix of emotions had been enough to frighten it off.

Joe dialed the number and waited as it rang through to the Palace. A woman with a crisp sounding voice answered and after Joe mentioned David’s name, she connected him to David’s room.

It rang a few times and Joe resigned himself to trying back later. Just as he was about to hang up, the ringing stopped and David’s breathless voice came on the line.

“David Webster speaking,” David said and he sounded so formal, Joe almost laughed at him.

“You almost missed me,” Joe said.

“Joe!” David said, his excitement palpable. “You got my message.”

“Well, there weren’t a lot of other options,” Joe said, but found himself smiling as well.

“I’m not sure what plans you have tonight,” David said cautiously, like he expected Joe to be out every night, taking girls dancing or drinking at a bar. “But I wanted to see if you would like to grab something to eat. Maybe show me the good bars of San Francisco?”

Joe almost laughed. “Web, you’d probably know the good bars of San Francisco better than me. I know the bad, the mediocre and the terrible bars of the city.”

“Those sound far better than any of the bars that I can think of,” David said. “And dinner?”

Joe grimaced. He wanted to say yes, but David’s idea of dinner probably consisted of three courses at a restaurant where everyone wore white gloves and tuxedos.

“I’ve heard that you have to have clams while you’re in San Francisco,” David said.

Joe could work with that. “Yes, best in the west,” he said. “Tell you what, let’s go to the Old Clam House. They have this golden gate clam chowder—you’ve got to try it.”

“I’ve got to try it,” David agreed.

They set up that they would meet at the Old Clam House in about an hour—enough time for Joe to clean up a bit and get himself over to dinner.

David was already waiting outside when Joe showed up and his face split into a wide grin. “I’m glad you made it,” he said, reaching out a hand to shake Joe’s in hello. The handshake couldn’t have lasted more than a second or two, but it felt like there was a spark coming from David’s skin, dashing under Joe’s, sliding up his arm and implanting in his chest. For a long, breathless moment, Joe’s chest hurt so badly, he thought that this could have been it—the moment of death. And then the pain curled up on itself, leaving a sense of relief and warmth behind.

When Joe pulled himself together and looked at David, wondering just how much he’d managed to shock him, David was looking down at their hands where Joe gripped David’s desperately. Abruptly, Joe let go and moved his hand away.

“Sorry,” Joe said, feeling awkward. “I have this thing where my chest hurts sometimes. I didn’t mean to—” Hold your hand? No. Grab you? No. “—do that.” He was definitely impressing the Harvard boy with his conversational ability.

David still seemed a little stunned, so Joe took the reins. “Come on, Web, let’s go inside. I’m freezing my ass off out here and they serve a great clam chowder inside. It’s going to knock your socks off, just you wait.”

They picked a table near the back, a black and white checkered table cloth tucked in neatly, and two rickety chairs that they slid into. The table pressed up against a window, looking out onto the street, and after a waitress came by to take their orders (two clam chowders and a kettle of steamed clams), both of them watched the cars going by.

For some reason, Joe felt nervous about talking—it shouldn’t have mattered, he didn’t imagine he’d be seeing a lot more of a guy that lived on the East Coast. But he couldn’t shake the jittery feeling along the back of his spine.

Joe snuck a look at David. David turned to face the table, catching Joe in the act. Joe refused to look away on principle, maintaining eye contact as the moment stretched out between them. Eventually, David cleared his throat.

“How does this hold up against New England’s finest?” David asked.

“Doesn’t even compare,” Joe said, latching onto the argument like the overture it was. “I can’t believe that you’ve never had real San Francisco chowder before. You will thank me.”

“I’ll thank you, huh?” David asked, and he smiled at Joe, soft like this was an inside joke between the two of them. Something funny happened in Joe’s chest, but it felt good, and Joe couldn’t help but smile back.

The restaurant finally kicked them out at closing and Joe and David meandered towards the Mission District where Joe took David to Johnny’s Tavern. It wasn’t much of anything—just a watering hole with some booths and halfway decent beer and it looked like a relatively quiet night, so Joe and David were able to grab one of the booths in the back.

“Do you come here often?” David asked as he looked around.

“That sounds like a bad pick-up line,” Joe said. “Hold that thought, I’m going to get us a round.”

When he came back to the table bearing two glasses of Hamm’s, David was watching him intently. “Thanks—next round’s mine.” David said.

“We’ll see about that,” Joe said and winked at David making him laugh.

“So have you found her yet?” David asked.

“Her?”

“The girl that you talked about finding at the end of the war,” David said.

Joe tried to think about what David was referring to and at Joe’s continued confusion, David mimed the outline of very large breasts. The lightbulb went on in Joe’s brain and he started laughing.

“No, not yet,” Joe said. “Haven’t managed to spend a lot of time looking—although my ma keeps pushing me to. What about you?”

David shrugged. “Not looking either. Although my parents keep setting me up with girl after girl. They’re probably hoping to wear me down.”

David switched the subject after that—asking Joe about driving cabs and San Francisco before they moved on to David’s graduation at Harvard and job in the family business.

“Do you like it?” Joe asked, a few beers down the line.

“Sometimes,” David said. “I don’t know. I’m doing it because my family expects it of me. I do a fine job of it. Do I love it? Probably not.”

Joe didn’t have the luxury of doing something that he loved—whatever that might happen to be. He worked as a cab driver because it paid alright and had good benefits.

“What would you do if you could do anything and get paid decently for it?” David asked.

Joe shrugged. “I wouldn’t drive a cab,” he said. “Beyond that, I have no idea.” He looked down at his hand and caught the time. “Jesus Christ.”

David’s body snapped to high alert, his attention scanning the room.

“No,” Joe said. “I’m sorry. I just realized it’s midnight. My shift starts tomorrow at 6 a.m.”

David stood up. “I didn’t realize—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Stop,” Joe said and held up a hand for emphasis. “It’s not a bad thing. I mean, I should probably get going so I don’t crash my car tomorrow, but I had a good time.”

“Me too,” David said. “I’m heading back home this weekend, but I’m really glad that I got to see you.”

For a while, they argued about how Joe would get home. Joe planned to walk as he had two perfectly good feet and they were only a twenty-minute walk or so away from the Fillmore district. David seemed to think that someone was waiting to jump Joe the moment that he left Johnny’s.

In the end, they compromised by David walking along with Joe towards Joe’s home where he’d catch a cab back to the Palace. It was a nice walk to take with David—Joe would give him that.

That weekend, Joe’s chest flared up again—concerning enough that Joe even considered paying the exorbitant amount of money that a doctor would charge to examine him. It put him in a bad mood and Joe’s family stayed clear of him.

It continued through until the following week when a post card arrived in the mail. Written in a neat and precise handwriting, Joe scanned it until he saw the sender. David Webster. He must have kept the address that Joe had written for him.

Carefully, Joe turned the card over to see a picture of a mountain range that the post card identified as the Colorado Rockies. When he flipped the card back, he read through the note.

_Joe,_

_The train had a brief stop in Denver. It’s beautiful out here, although I’m not sure that I could ever leave the coasts again. We’ve got another two days of trains before I reach home, but I’m already hoping that I’ll be back to San Francisco soon._

_All the best,_

_David Webster_

It made Joe smile and uncurled that constant companion of pain in his chest. He brushed his thumb over the letters, imagining David as he wrote them. Eventually, when he couldn’t justify looking at it any longer, he tucked it into his pocket and carried it with him.

The next letter came a week later and then another one the week after that. At first, Joe hadn’t made any move to respond to them. There was something weird about the thought of being friendly with David. He’d once been a thorn in Joe’s side. Then he’d been…well, Joe hadn’t thought of him in a purely friendly manner.

But Joe couldn’t deny that he looked forward to each card and letter that David sent. David had a knack for words, letters ranging from stories about work to random thoughts about the world. He always had something to say.

But he wasn’t sure what David wanted from him. Did he just want an outlet to write to? Did he even want to hear from Joe? But David had taken the effort of writing him and so Joe painstakingly wrote a response, letting David know that he and his family were well and the city was still standing. That alone looked sparse on the paper in Joe’s chicken scratch, so he added in that he’d had a customer earlier that week who’d wanted Joe to drive him all the way out to see the redwood trees—an hour away. He’d paid Joe to drive him out there and then wait before driving him back. He essentially paid fifteen bucks just to see some trees.

In his next letter, David said that he’d always wanted to see the redwoods. Of course.

David seemed to write constantly, words rolling off the page about working in New York or his hopes for the future, like how he wanted to visit Alaska. He asked about Joe’s family and remembered the stories that Joe told about his own life from time to time, even though Joe must have been the world’s worst letter writer.

No matter the subject, each letter made Joe feel happy and lighter, as if the letter had physically removed the weight of all that he’d been carrying around. David may not have been Joe’s friend prior to their unexpected reunion, but there was no denying that he was now one. Perhaps even one of Joe’s closest.

It felt unfair to think about David each night—although there was no stopping it. Joe imagined the smile that he’d given Joe, the firm press of his hand gripping Joe, David’s curiosity and enthusiasm. David never backed down. Joe wanted all of it so badly, just for himself.

Each morning, he woke up feeling like the worst kind of man. But it didn’t stop him from thinking about it the next night.

Then, one day, Joe received another letter that made his heart stop and then restart, beating so rapidly that Joe couldn’t breathe. _I’ll be back in San Francisco in two weeks. I can’t wait to see you_. The last sentence echoed in Joe’s chest all evening. He stayed with him while he drove his cab or when he went out to drink with friends.

 _I can’t wait to see you_.

Joe couldn’t wait to see David. Even if the swell of guilt in his stomach cautioned him that it wasn’t Joe’s best idea.

Joe waited for David at the Oakland station where the clock inched towards 9:15 a.m. as slowly as if Joe were trying to boil water. His nerves were jittery, like David was some girl that he was trying to impress. Joe shook himself—this was no time to be silly—and he stood up straighter near Platform 7, where the streamliner from Chicago was due to arrive. Joe tried not to check his watch yet another time, but by the time that the brightly painted yellow and red train slowly pulled into the station, it felt like a full hour had passed.

People streamed out of the train once it came to a complete stop, massing around Joe as he tried to keep his head up in order to spot David. As time marched past, no David in sight, Joe had plenty of opportunity to regret offering to come. Maybe it had all been a practical joke. Maybe David hadn’t caught the train in Chicago.

No, Joe told himself. If it was some bad joke, David wouldn’t have spent months writing to Joe. If he’d missed his train, he would have made a long-distance call and let Joe know. David would be there.

Eventually, David emerged from the train, trying to balance three suitcases and not succeeding by any stretch of the word. Joe’s heart leaped and Joe followed, rushing to help David out by grabbing one of the suitcases. They two of them tussled for one of David’s other suitcases, but eventually Joe let David win—deeming it more gracious to let the guest decide what to do with their own baggage.

There was no point trying to talk in the crush, so David followed Joe as he led them to a quieter spot in the train station, where they both put down the bags.

“Joe,” David said, grinning infectiously and Joe could only smile back. “I’m so happy that you made it. I had visions of arriving and having no warm welcome.”

“Hey, when I say I’m going to do something, I mean it,” Joe said, bristling. For some reason, that made David smile wider.

“I shouldn’t have doubted you,” David said. This time, he didn’t protest when Joe picked up the second of his three bags and carried the two of them outside where he’d parked his car.

David stopped short when he saw Joe’s car. “You didn’t have to drive out here for me,” he said slowly.

“Shut up, Web, get in the car,” Joe said and after they’d stowed the three suitcases, David got into the passenger seat.

“Where to?” Joe asked.

“Breakfast?” David said definitively.

“At your command,” Joe said cheekily and David elbowed Joe firmly.

They went to a mom and pop diner in Oakland for breakfast—Joe ordered pancakes the size of his head and heartily dug in. David went for an omelet and toast, practically inhaling his food.

“What, did they starve you on the train?” Joe asked.

“I never have much of an appetite when I’m on a train,” David said. Aside from the war, Joe could count the number of times that he’d been on a train on one hand. And during the war, he could have eaten at any time of the day as long as there was food in front of him.

“What brought you out to San Francisco this time?” Joe asked.

David looked down at the dregs of his coffee. “I told my father that I wanted to come work out here.”

“For how long?” Joe asked.

“Indefinitely,” David said.

Joe stopped short. “But isn’t your family back east?”

“Yeah,” David said.

Joe thought it through. “But—why move to San Francisco? Don’t you love New York?”

David looked down at his hands. “Have you noticed anything odd since we met?”

“Other than you?” Joe asked, feeling at sea and trying to find an anchor between them.

“I’m being serious. When we went to dinner, you talked about something being wrong with your chest. Have you noticed that it got better since we’ve been in contact?”

“What—” Joe said. “I mean, sure my chest hurts, but what doesn’t ache after spending an extended period of time being shot at or living in the middle of a forest in the dead of winter?”

“Has it gotten better?” David asked again. Joe opened his mouth to answer but paused, thinking it through. The sharp pain had almost completely ceased and the tenderness had become barely noticeable. Right then, it didn’t even hurt at all. And every time, he’d received a letter from David, the pain had lessened.

“Yes—” Joe said eventually. “How?”

“I don’t know,” David said. “I just know that it’s the same for me.”

“But—that makes no sense,” Joe said. “I’m not going to pretend that I’m as smart as you, but how does this make sense?”

“Don’t say that,” David said. “You always claim that you’re not smart but you are one of the smartest people that I know.”

“Then why does this make absolutely no sense to me?” Joe asked, his temper beginning to rise. “Explain it to me, please, because for the life of me, I can’t figure it out.”

“I don’t know,” David said. “But when I decided to move out here, it felt like the rightest decision that I’d ever made. And now that I’m here, I feel it.”

“I—I need a few minutes,” Joe said and blindly reached into his wallet to pull out enough to cover his meal and tip.

Outside, he picked a direction and started walking, his mind racing. What could David mean? Did he—did he want the same things as Joe? Why would David leave his entire life for some feeling in his chest?

When Joe came back to the dinner, David was waiting at the table still, his coffee freshly filled and reading a book. Of course, Joe thought fondly.

David looked up at Joe’s arrival, relief setting across his face.

“Did you think that I wouldn’t come back?” Joe asked.

“I hoped that you would come back,” David said.

“Come on,” Joe said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Neither one of them spoke much on the way into the city, although Joe snuck a couple of looks at David, trying to figure out what he wanted.

“Where am I taking you to?” Joe asked.

David rattled off an address in Haight-Ashbury, residential area. Joe turned sharply to David. “What are you doing there?”

“I suppose you’ll find out when we get there,” David said.

“Are you really not going to tell me?” Joe asked.

“You’ll see,” David said and Joe resisted the urge to reach out and strangle him.

They made good time into the city, eventually pulling up to the address that David had given him, which happened to be a block of apartments.

“Are you going to help me or not?” David asked as he got out of the car. Joe groaned but followed, grabbing two of the suitcases, despite David’s protestations, and he followed David to the front door and then up three flights of stairs until they stopped in front of a freshly painted door with a neat mat on the front door. David knelt down and flipped the mat up, revealing a key underneath it. Apparently, he’d planned ahead.

David opened up the apartment to reveal a small entryway which led to a small kitchen and living room and then another hallway likely leading to the bedroom.

“Fancy,” Joe said, feeling uneasy, like his skin was too tight.

“Hey,” David said and came over and carefully took the suitcases out of Joe’s hands. Just the small touch sent a warm buzz up Joe’s arms and Joe hugged his arms to his chest to resist temptation to reach out to David again. “I meant what I said back there. I moved out here for a reason.”

“What happens if the reason goes away?” Joe asked.

“Are you planning on leaving?”

“You can’t move all the way across the country for me,” Joe said exasperated. “You have a life.”

“Well I have moved all the way across the country,” David said, matter-of-factly. “Do you want me to leave?”

“Well, no,” Joe said.

“That’s solved that then,” David said and he took a step towards Joe, close enough that Joe could almost feel the heat emanating from David.

“But what if what I want is different from what you want?” Joe said, a little desperately.

“What do you want?” David said, moving in again, and now Joe could smell David, an intoxicating blend of spice and cedar, with a hint of sweat. Joe wanted to lean in—he wanted to kiss David, feel David the way that he’d imagined, he wanted David so much.

“I—” Joe said and then David kissed him, pulling Joe in close and pressing their bodies together. It was everything that Joe had imagined and more—David kissed Joe, each press heated and unrelenting until Joe thought he was going to go out of his mind

“Does this place have a bedroom?” he asked.

David nodded and Joe jerked him into the hallway, opening the first door that he came across. There was a bed, simply made, in the middle of the room but Joe would probably have not objected even if there was nothing but cement on the floors.

Both of them shrugged their clothes off and then they were both naked, David lying on his back on the bed, looking up at Joe.

“I love the way that you look at me,” David said and then he kicked out his legs and tripped Joe forward, so that Joe landed heavy on top of him.

“How do I look at you?” Joe asked.

“Like you want me, no matter what,” David said. “Because that’s how I feel about you.”

Joe closed his eyes in acceptance and then kissed David again, letting his body say what he felt.

They were both too riled up to take their time and David came gratifyingly quickly. Joe gripped himself, watching David come back to himself, with blooming red marks across his neck and chest, and lips swollen from Joe’s attention.

When David opened his eyes, he looked so good that Joe couldn’t help but lean down and kiss him some more. David’s hand came down to Joe’s cock and David pulled back. “I think I can help you with that,” he said and moved down the bed.

Joe groaned embarrassingly loudly at the first press of David’s mouth.

When they finished, David reached over and pressed his hand against the center of Joe’s chest, where the old pain had once resided. Joe placed his hand over David’s.

Neither one of them said anything as they slipped into sleep, but Joe could feel, deep within himself, some missing component slot into place. A bright satisfaction washed over Joe, incandescent and light. David curled into him, letting their bodies intertwine.


End file.
